After Doha: rejecting dystopia by default

Fear
and insecurity is filling the void left by our governments' inaction on climate
change. But framing Climate Change as a security problem, rather than one of
justice or human rights, may only perpetuate that.

The
world's political leaders couldn't say they hadn't been warned. In the run up
to the UN climate negotiations held in November in Qatar, it wasn't just the World Bank, the International Energy Agency, or global
accounting firm PWC predicting dangerous
levels of climate change. Even nature appeared to sound alarm bells with
unseasonal hurricanes devastating New York and islands in the Caribbean and the
Philippines. Faced with this chorus, you might have expected a response from
the world's governments. Instead the UN summit passed almost unnoticed by the
international media and the result was another empty declaration, described by
Friends of the Earth as a “sham of a deal” that “fails on every count.”

Confronted
with one of the greatest challenges our planet and its peoples have faced, our
political leaders have clearly failed us. In stark contrast to the radical
coordinated action to bail out banks and prop-up the financial system,
governments have instead chosen to step aside, giving a free hand to the
markets and the fossil fuel giants, rather than daring a carefully planned
conversion of our carbon-based economies. Their choice is not one of inaction,
as is often suggested, but one of actively ensuring dangerous climate change.
For every coal plant built in China, oil field mined in the Arctic, or shale
gas field fracked in the US locks in carbon into the atmosphere for up to 1000
years and means that even radical steps to decarbonise in future years may not
be sufficient to prevent runaway global warming.

The
President of the World Bank, Dr Jim Yong Kim said the rise predicted in their
report to temperatures of 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit before the end of the century
would create a world that was “very frightening.” For the first
time, the issue of how to pay for the 'loss and damage' that climate change is
already causing for the poorest and most vulnerable people worldwide took
centre stage at Doha. It is a tragic irony that discussions about stopping or
preparing for global climate change (known as mitigation and adaptation in UN
language) have now been upstaged by demands for reparations and a growing
concern, not least in the insurance industry, about who or what is going to pay
for the damage inflicted by climate change.

These
narratives are deeply distressing and disempowering. It is now much easier for
people to imagine a dystopian future for their children than a world that has
pulled together to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Far from
prompting mass action, fear and insecurity is apparently prompting people to
turn off and tune out in droves, or to seek solace in conspiracy theories.

This
apathy is being exploited by those who welcome – or at the very least are
looking to profit from – the politics of insecurity and what the Pentagon has
dubbed “the age of consequences.” Across the world and often behind closed
doors, securocrats and military strategists are engaging in ‘foresight’
exercises that – unlike their political masters – take climate change for
granted and develop options and strategies to adapt to the risks and
opportunities it presents. Only a month before the Doha climate negotiations, the
US National Academy of Sciences released a report commissioned by the CIA that
sought to “evaluate the evidence on possible connections between climate change
and U.S. national security concerns.” The study concluded that it would be
“prudent for security analysts to expect climate surprises in the coming
decade, including unexpected and potentially disruptive single events as well
as conjunctions of events occurring simultaneously or in sequence, and for them
to become progressively more serious and more frequent thereafter, most likely
at an accelerating rate”.

The
military and the intelligence community's willingness to take climate change
seriously has been often uncritically welcomed by some in the environmental
community; the agencies themselves say they are just doing their job. The
question very few people are asking is: what are the consequences of framing
climate change as a security issue rather than a justice or human rights one?

In
a world already demeaned by concepts like ‘collateral damage’, participants in
these new climate war games need not speak candidly about what they envisage,
but the subtext to their discourse is always the same: how can states in the
industrialised North – at a time of increasing potential scarcity and, it is assumed,
unrest – secure themselves from the ‘threat’ of climate refugees, resource wars
and failed states, while maintaining control of key strategic resources and
supply chains. In the words of the proposed EU Climate Change and International
Security strategy, for example, climate change is “best viewed as a threat
multiplier” which carries “political and security risks that directly affect
European interests”.

The
industries that thrive off the ugly realpolitik of international security are
also preparing for climate change. In 2011, a defence industry conference
suggested that the energy and environmental market was worth at least eight
times their own trillion-dollar-a-year trade. “Far from being excluded from
this opportunity, the aerospace, defence and security sector is gearing up to
address what looks set to become its most significant adjacent market since the
strong emergence of the civil/homeland security business almost a decade ago,”
it suggested.

Some
of these investments may prove welcome and important, but the climate security
discourse is also helping fuel the investment boom in high-tech border-control
systems, crowd-control technologies, next generation offensive weapons systems
(like drones) and less-lethal weapons. It should be inconceivable that
democratic states are equipping themselves in this way for a climate-changed
world, but every year a few more applications are piloted, and a few more hit
the market. Looking at the consolidation of militarised borders across the
world over the past decade, you wouldn’t want to be a climate refugee in 2012,
never mind 2050.

It
is not just the coercive industries that are positioning themselves to profit
from fears about the future. The commodities upon which life depends are being
woven into new security narratives based on fears about scarcity,
overpopulation and inequality. Increasing importance is attached to ‘food
security’, ‘energy security’, ‘water security’ and so on, with little analysis
of exactly what is being secured for whom, and at whose expense. But when
perceived food insecurity in South Korea and Saudi Arabia is fuelling land
grabs and exploitation in Africa, and rising food prices are causing widespread
social unrest, alarm bells should be ringing.

The
climate security discourse takes these outcomes for granted. It is predicated
on winners and losers – the secure and the damned – and based on a vision of
‘security’ so warped by the ‘war on terror’ that it essentially envisages
disposable people in place of the international solidarity required to face the
future in a just and collaborative way.

To
confront this ever creeping securitisation of our future, we must of course
continue to fight to end our fossil fuel addiction as urgently as possible,
joining movements like those fighting tar sands developments in North America
and forming broad civic alliances that pressure towns, states and governments
to transition their economies to a low-carbon footing. We cannot stop climate
change – it is already happening – but we can still prevent the worst effects.

However,
we must also be prepared to reclaim the climate adaptation agenda from one
based on acquisition through dispossession and the self-interested security
agendas of the powerful to one based on universal human rights and the dignity
of all people. We simply cannot afford to leave our future in the hands of the
securocrats and corporations when difficult decisions have to be taken.

The
recent experience of Hurricane Sandy, in the aftermath of which the Occupy
movement put the federal government to shame in their response to
the crisis, shows the power of popular movements to respond positively to local
disasters. Yet local responses by themselves will not be enough. We need
broader international strategies that check corporate and military power while
globalising the tools for resilience. This means putting forward progressive
solutions around food, water, energy and coping with extreme weather that
provide viable alternatives to the market-based and security-obsessed
approaches favoured by our governments. Perhaps most importantly, we need to
start packaging these ideas in positive visions for the future that will
empower people to reject dystopia and reclaim a liveable just future for all.

About the authors

Nick Buxton is a communications consultant, working on media, publications and online communications for TNI. He has been based in California since September 2008 and prior to that lived in Bolivia for four years, working as writer/web editor at Fundación Solón, a Bolivian organisation working on issues of trade, water, culture and historical memory.

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Security for the future: in search of a new vision

What does ‘security’ mean to you? The Ammerdown Invitation seeks your participation in a new civic conversation about national security in the UK and beyond. Its authors offer an analysis of the shortcomings of current approaches and propose a different vision of the future. Please use the invitation summary document for seminars, workshops and public meetings, and share the responses and insights that emerge.